Protecting and Growing Self and Wealth in These Uncertain Times

Propaganda

Big eye roll on my part when I spotted the following on my Internet service provider’s home page this afternoon. Charles Babington of the Associated Press reported Friday:

Democrats’ new message on America’s economic recovery is: We told you so, and we’re going to keep telling you so.

The economy is rebounding on nearly every front, even if the middle class still needs help, and it’s time to tell that story loudly, top Democrats say. That’s the key to reversing their midterm election setbacks, according to a host of House Democrats, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, all of whom came to Philadelphia this week for pep talks and strategy sessions.

“Democrats have to stand up, you’ve got to explain what we did,” Biden said to loud applause Friday. “Be proud of it… We can’t let the Republican Party rewrite history.”

Obama said much the same the night before. “The record shows we were right” the president said, referring to the 2009 stimulus, the bank and auto industry bailouts, and other strategies to pull out the great recession of 2008…

(Editor’s note: Bold added for emphasis)

A couple of thoughts here:

1. The true state of the U.S. economy and larger financial system is worrisome, as the “great recession of 2008” was merely “papered over” (I talk about that enough on this blog on a regular basis that I don’t feel the need to go into it today).

The news radio station I listen to most often in Chicago has been going on and on this week about the U.S. economy being on such strong footing these days. It’s almost as if they (like others in the mainstream media?) are carrying out the marching orders of the Democratic spindoctors to promote this “new message.” It’s been so ridiculous that if you didn’t know any better, you might think you were listening to old newsreels laying it on thick with the propaganda of the day:

And like that situation with the sodas, two choices often aren’t ideal for me. Particularly when it comes to the major U.S. political parties, who I’ve come to see as merely two “heads” belonging to the same monster (special interests of the rich and powerful).

3. Finally, I’ve said this before but it bears repeating:

Use this economic “rebound”- as much of an illusion as it may be- to your advantage.

Is your employment status less than ideal? You may want to consider improving that situation while “the getting’s good.” Need some extra income? You may want to look at taking on a part-time job while they’re available. Looking to purchase some emergency preps? “The shadow of crisis has passed.” President Obama said so in his recent State of the Union speech. Shop around for discounted gear, supplies, and other items while demand isn’t as strong as it has been lately and will be when hard times arrive down the road.

“We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the President that everybody should hate the police. I don’t care how you want to describe it- that’s what the protests are all about. The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged. The protests, even the ones that don’t lead to violence- and a lot of them lead to violence- all lead to a conclusion:

The police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong.

Actually, the people who do the most for the black community in America are the police- New York City and elsewhere. They are the ones, not the Al Sharptons, they are the ones putting their lives on the line to save black children.”

-Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, on FOX News Sunday, December 21, 2014

Back when “Dubya” was President, I started to suspect a number of terrorism warnings issued by his administration were being done not to inform the American public of some real danger, but rather to instill fear to achieve an objective.

I believe this use of specific alerts with an ulterior motive has carried over into the Obama administration.

That being said, I think there are warnings which are the “real McCoy,” which makes it all the more tougher to figure out which ones are bogus.

Last Friday, I was watching Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing on ABC when the following video log about fear appeared:

“Crash prophet” Peter Schiff sees inflation getting worse in America. And with it, Washington, the Fed, and the mainstream media spinning rising prices as something that’s beneficial for the general public. The Euro Pacific Capital CEO and Chief Global Strategist added a new entry Tuesday on his YouTube video blog The Schiff Report, and warned viewers of the following:

It’s going to get worse. And, what is the Fed going to do about it? Because the problem is, no matter how high that inflation number gets, they can never admit it’s a problem. Because if they admit that it’s a problem, they’ve got to do something about it. But they can’t do anything about it. Because if they want to fight inflation, what tools do they have? Just one. They’ve got to raise interest rates, which means they’ve got to end quantitative easing. And in order to raise interest rates, they’ve got to start selling their bonds and their mortgages back into the market. That will collapse the real estate market, collapse the stock market, send the economy into a sharp recession, and bring about a financial crisis worse than 2008. So because they can’t do that, they can’t do anything. So they’re going to have to tolerate inflation, no matter how high it gets. They’re going to have to convince us that it’s good for us, no matter how high it gets. They’re going to say, “Oh, well, maybe it’s transitory,” “It’s because of the weather,” “Oh, you know, we had such low inflation for so long, we need a few years of higher inflation to even it all out.” Who knows what kind of excuses Janet Yellen is going to come up with to rationalize why whatever the inflation number is- no matter how high it is- it’s always going to be a good thing?

But I wonder if the media- if the guys at Bloomberg or the guys at The New York Times or the AP or the Financial Times- will ever see through this charade. Will they ever see through this smokescreen and come out and call the Fed out on this? Will they ever say, “You know what, we’ve got too much inflation- this is not good. Do something about it.” And when the Fed doesn’t do something about it, that’s going to be a big problem for the dollar. Because that’s when people realize that this is QE Infinity, that inflation is never going to stop, that the dollar’s value is going to erode away in perpetuity. That’s when the bottom drops out of the market. That’s when the real crisis comes in. Because now the dollar really starts to cave, and puts more pressure on the bond market. That means the Fed has to print a lot more money. A lot more dollars that nobody wants to buy the Treasuries that nobody wants to keep the market from collapsing. That accelerates the inflationary spiral, and puts the Fed in a real box. Because then, it just can’t print the dollar into oblivion. It can’t turn it into monopoly money. Then it has to slam on the breaks. Then it has to really jack up interest rates. Not just a few hundred basis points- ten percent, fifteen percent, twenty percent. Paul Volcker style. Of course, the medicine won’t go down nearly as smoothly as it did back then. Not that it was so great tasting- we had a pretty bad recession in 1980. But that’s nothing compared to what we’re going to go through, because we have a lot more debt now than we had then- it’s not even close. We don’t have the viable economy. We don’t have the trade surpluses or the current accounts surpluses. And we don’t have a federal government that has a long-term financing on the national debt. It’s all financed with T-bills. And we have all these adjustable rate mortgages. We have all these corporations, individuals that are so levered-up. We’ve got all these student loans and credit card debt. We have all this stuff that we didn’t have back in the 1980s that we’re going to have to deal with- thanks to the Fed.

A little more than a week ago, Euro Pacific Capital’s Peter Schiff- who correctly called the housing bust and 2008 economic crisis- told CNBC viewers that gold prices would eventually head north of $5,000 an ounce (blogged about here).

Schiff did an e-mail interview with MarketWatch this week, and the CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals talked more about the yellow metal. From that exchange:

Q: What would you say to investors who are discouraged by gold’s performance so far this year? (Futures are prices up around 7% year to date, but only partially making up for last year’s plunge.)

Be patient. Many investors in the 90’s believed that gold was a dead asset class. But in the 10 years from 2001 to 2011, gold increased almost 900%. The moves come in waves.

Q: With prices currently under $1,300 an ounce, have prices hit bottom for this year? Is gold a bargain at these levels — is it a good time to buy now? Please explain.

Most likely prices have bottomed, as too many speculators are looking for lower prices. The fundamental case for gold has also never been stronger. From a gold short seller’s perspective, this will prove to be the equivalent of a perfect storm. Their losses will be severe…

I’ve been following gold closely for a decade now. I can’t remember any time in those last ten years when the amount of hate directed at the precious metal was ever greater. Particularly in the mainstream financial media and accompanying reader comment sections. Just check out some of the comments in the MarketWatch article I’ve been discussing if you don’t believe me.

I can’t help but wonder sometimes if paid “trolls” aren’t out in force these days in the various comment areas and forums with the mission of talking down gold and its highest-profile supporters at any chance they get.

Then again, many of these comments could just be coming from individuals who fear a rising gold price for some reason or another.

“Where you stand is where you sit”?

I just know one thing. I don’t see stocks catching nearly the same kind of flak as this particular “shiny lump of metal,” as one “correspondent” recently called gold.

Like Mr. Schiff pointed out- before the recent pullback, the price of one ounce of that “shiny lump of metal” increased almost 900 percent in the decade prior.

Anyone want to give me their “shiny lumps of metal”? It’s going to plummet past $1,000 to almost nothing anyway- if one believes what’s claimed in many comments and forums these days.

(Editor’s notes: Info added to “Crash Prophets” page; I am not responsible for any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly, of any information presented herein.)

Regular readers of Survival And Prosperity may have noticed I didn’t blog much last week. Truth be told, I was reading and watching a lot of blog-related material that I want to address in the coming weeks. I didn’t pay as close attention to the news as I would a “normal” week. But it was hard not to notice all the “rosy” talk about the U.S. economy. Sure, some decent economic reports have come out. Problem is, I don’t have much faith in them as I saw some years back how they can- and subsequently have been- manipulated to be more positive than if the numbers hadn’t been fudged.

As far as I’m concerned, the United States economy and larger financial system are still in big trouble at the end of 2013. The so-called “recovery”?- primarily the result of massive amounts of “stimulus” and new debt that the Federal Reserve and Washington chose to employ to paper-over an economic disaster that reared its ugly head in 2008.

Come to think of it, the “recovery” reminds me a lot of that scene from the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, where Uma Thurman’s character receives a healthy dose of adrenaline after she OD’s:

Just substitute the economy for Ms. Thurman and massive amounts of “stimulus” for the adrenaline, and you might get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Euro Pacific Capital’s Peter Schiff remarked some time ago about all the stimulus going into the economy. He basically pointed out that since there’s been so much of it, it’s only reasonable to expect the recipient would appear to be recovering. Perhaps even full of vitality. However, remove the stimulus and regression eventually sets in.

And that’s where I think we’re heading.

Now, I’m not just talking about a recession. It’s a little bit more complicated.

As I mentioned before, not only has there been a tremendous amount of stimulus being deployed, but trillions and trillions of dollars worth of new debt accrued as well. The United States was a financial “house of cards” before. All this new debt heaped on top of it has made it even more unstable. Worse- Washington has demonstrated time and time again they have no serious intention of putting a halt to the nonsense.

Therefore, not only am I expecting a U.S. recession, but a financial crash as well.

Regrettably, I just can’t see any way around it at this point in time.

I don’t know how much time we have left before the nation hits the proverbial brick wall, but our “financial reckoning day” is coming.

Washington and the Fed got lucky when they were able to kick the can down the road back in 2008. Eventually, that luck will run out.

Here’s hoping as many Americans as possible are prepared for that inevitable occasion.

I only recently heard about the tragic shootings that took place at the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard earlier today. While information about the incident is still coming in- and a lot of nonsense is already being spouted-off (“declare the NRA a terrorist organization!”)- I read the following on the website of NBC4 Washington, D.C. a short time ago:

At least 12 people are dead after a shooting Monday morning in a heavily secured building at the D.C. Navy Yard, and authorities now say they have identified the gunman.

That gunman, 34-year-old Aaron Alexis of Fort Worth, Texas, is among the 12 dead. Officials said he recently began working as a civilian contractor.

On the home page of the NBC affiliate, a young, African-American male sporting a bald/shaved head is shown superimposed on a banner which reads:

“Gunman ID’d in Navy Yard Shooting That Killed 13″

Hmm. A number of people were probably real disappointed that it wasn’t a “creepy cracker” that was shown.

He shot the security guard in the head, killing him. The shooter then continued through the building, and seemed to target his victims, who were mostly on the third and fourth floors.

D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and several other law enforcement agencies responded, Bensen said. During that response, a MPD officer was shot in the leg.

The gunman was then shot by a FBI hostage response team, Bensen said.

According to what witnesses are telling investigators, by the time the shootings ended, the gunman was seen with a semiautomatic 9 mm pistol and an AR-15 assault rifle. Authorities are investigating whether the gunman took the security guard’s service weapon – likely a 9 mm pistol – and hid in wait for the first responding D.C. police officers, who would be specially armed with AR-15s.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

An African-American male suspect possibly armed with just a shotgun initially?

No “assault weapon” or “scary” handgun?

(Editor’s note: Some have already suggested this account of the incident may get “sanitized” real quick once the mainstream media get their marching orders from the powers-that-be)

Something tells me the hopes of the anti-Second Amendment crowd in furthering their agenda with the Navy Yard shootings will fade pretty fast if what NBC4 Washington is reporting this afternoon is found to be true.

In the meantime, my prayers go out to all those affected by this violence.

I wouldn’t have expected anything less from NBC these days with their headline about the latest “National Income and Product Accounts, Gross Domestic Product, second quarter 2013 (advance estimate)” report.

In other words, the GDP report that was released on July 31.

From the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis:

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013 (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 1.1 percent (revised).

2nd quarter GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.7 percent. Check.

1st quarter GDP revised down to 1.1 percent. Check.

(Editor’s note: Is it me, or is GDP routinely getting revised downward?)

But what’s this about a “Comprehensive Revision: 1929 through 1st quarter 2013” I saw in the report headline?

A little farther down the page there’s this:

Comprehensive Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts

The estimates released today reflect the results of the 14th comprehensive (or benchmark) revision of the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) in conjunction with the second quarter 2013 “advance” estimate. More information on the revision is available on BEA’s Web site at www.bea.gov/gdp-revisions.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

A “revision.” I’d heard talk about this revision to how U.S. gross domestic product would be calculated starting in the 2nd quarter and going forward.

Not all of it positive.

Enter Peter Schiff. The “crash prophet” spent a good deal of time discussing this revision in his latest entry on his YouTube video blog, The Schiff Report. The CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital said last Friday:

If you’re going to believe in GDP, what we have now- what the government is now reporting- is not GDP. It’s something brand new that the government just made up. But they’re going to pretend it’s GDP… they have changed the methodology of calculating GDP, to produce a bigger number. Why does the government want a bigger number? To make the economy look like it’s bigger. Therefore, if you take a look at all of our debt, relative to our GDP, it looks like the debt is now a smaller portion of the GDP, because we’ve magically made the GDP bigger.

Also, I think there’s another reason. The entertainment industry- movies, television, records (Editor’s note: records, Peter?)- all of this intellectual stuff. This is certainly part of the U.S. economy that is growing. And I think what the U.S. government wants to do is magnify the impact on the GDP on the parts that it likes, while minimizing the impact of other parts, like legitimate manufacturing and investment.

So what’s going to happen, is now, I believe, that the GDP, because of these changes, will grow faster than it would have had they not made these changes. It’s kind of like they hedonically-adjusted the GDP.

Schiff added later in the video blog entry:

This is all propaganda. None of this is real. But for some reason, the financial community, academia- they just accept it without question. And if anyone like me points to these figures and says they’re not honest, then “I’m a conspiracy nut.”

In his latest entry on The Schiff Report YouTube video blog, Peter Schiff really called out the economic Pollyannas for their talk of a real, sustainable recovery. Schiff, who correctly-called the U.S. housing crash and “Panic of ’08,” warned in yesterday’s posting:

Don’t confuse rising asset prices with a real recovery. Asset prices are rising because the Fed is artificially-stimulating the economy. And as long as the Fed is artificially-stimulating, we will never have a legitimate recovery. Stocks and real estate prices are rising for the wrong reason. They’re rising for the same reason as they were rising in 2004, 2005, 2006. And we all know how that movie ended. Well this movie is going to have an even worse ending. This is basically the same movie, only we’re making the same mistakes on a grander scale.

And it’s amazing for me to watch it, as all the people who were so clueless back in ’04, ’05, and ’06, who said that “no one could have seen this coming.” In the aftermath of the crisis in 2008 and 2009, these are the same guys that are oblivious today. And people like me who did see it coming, we’re the ones that are warning about the next crisis. And our warnings are being received with the same reaction as they were the last time around. You would have thought people might have learned something by now.

Despite all the evidence that the economic recovery is just a story- it’s wishful thinking at best, and maybe, more like propaganda- the market continues to march on.

The only reason we’re getting the rally in the stock and bond market, the only reason it’s not “the end of the world,” is because the Federal Reserve and other central banks are doing precisely what I feared they would do, which is exactly why I’ve been buying gold. So the reasons to buy gold have never been greater. And I think this new-found pessimism is going to create the backdrop- the wall of worry- that can launch the market into new highs.

(Editor’s notes: Info added to “Crash Prophets” page; I am not responsible for any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly, of any information presented herein.)

Being from Chicago, I should be used to them. In fact, a couple of years ago, I was getting off the Stevenson Expressway on the exit ramp to Cicero Avenue on the South Side when my car was swarmed by a number of them.

Although these weren’t your typical panhandlers. It was the Squeegee Army.

And yes, I did drive away singing “I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it, oh let’s dig it, can you dig it baby” like Isaac Hayes.

Anyway, the panhandlers I’m seeing these days aren’t the ones I’ve typically encountered over the years.

They’re young (late teens/twenties). They don’t appear at first glance to have any physical handicap that would prevent them from working. And they’re panhandling at intersections where they didn’t used to before.

First, it was the young girl at Cumberland and Higgins on the Northwest Side by Park Ridge. Then, it was the dude at the corner of Northwest Highway and Devon in the Edison Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. I only saw him once, and I kind of suspect a Chicago police officer (who probably resides in the area with his family) gave him a mouthful, kindly encouraging him to move his ass along.

And just this Tuesday, at the intersection of North and Harlem on the West Side by Elmwood Park, Oak Park, and River Forest, some young man was walking through traffic begging for money. He was also wearing desert camo pants. Maybe he was trying to get the message across to motorists that he was a vet?

Anyway, the numbers of panhandlers seem to be growing these days around the Chicagoland area. Not exactly the picture of a strengthening, sustainable economic recovery the American public is being sold on.

There are two real estate reporters I like to follow on a regular basis. CNBC’s Diana Olick and the Chicago Tribune’s Mary Umberger. Why do I like them so much? Because they don’t hold back on reporting the real conditions of the U.S. and Chicago housing markets. I remember them pretty much telling it as it was as the United States went through that housing bubble and subsequent crash- while many of their colleagues assumed the role of self-appointed real estate cheerleaders even as home sales and prices plummeted.

And these days, I’m detecting ‘irrational exuberance’ again in residential real estate. It’s not just me either. Umberger wrote in last weekend’s Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune:

If the Chicago real estate market were a patient recovering from a lingering, debilitating illness, the doctor might be obliged to set the patient’s over-expectant family straight: Yes, your loved one’s symptoms have eased up, says the MD, but, gee, it’s a little too soon to be training for a marathon.

Those are the kinds of expectations that many Chicago-area homeowners seem to harbor these days, according to Naperville appraiser Alvin “Chip” Wagner, whose recent newsletter to members of the local real estate community sought to address a form of irrational exuberance he’s seeing lately: Yes, the market is better, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your home is gaining in value — in fact, some prices might fall further.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

Umberger interviewed Wagner, who had this to say about Chicagoland homeowners being overly-optimistic. From the piece:

Well, absolutely, the market is improving, but not in the area of pricing, which is what homeowners want to know about. In the third quarter, the average sales price throughout the area was $244,203. One year ago, the average was $258,364. That’s about a 5.5 percent decline.

Yet, I go to people’s houses to do appraisals, and (the homeowners’ expectations are) driven by what they see in the media, and they say to me, the market has picked up, and they expect their house is growing in value. They expect to see a 3 to 5 percent growth. I end up having to tell them, your values aren’t appreciating, they may be flat or even declining.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

I don’t like hearing about the housing market being crummy as much as the next person. But what I do like are people being straight with me. Especially journalists.

“And (the homeowners’ expectations are) driven by what they see in the media.”

See what I mean about those cheerleaders? This is why I like straight-shooting reporters like Olick and Umberger. Wish more of their contemporaries could be like them, instead of barfing up a whole lot of nonsense all over my computer screen.

“The U.S. runs out of federal borrowing authority around the end of the year, but the Obama administration can use special measures to extend borrowing through late February or early March. As part of the fiscal cliff negotiations, Obama has proposed effectively ending the need for Congress to periodically raise the debt limit.”

-Washington Post website, December 5, 2012

Peter Schiff, President and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, talked about the looming U.S. “fiscal cliff” and a White House proposal to give the President the power to raise the nation’s debt “ceiling” as needed in his December 3 entry on The Schiff Report YouTube video blog. Schiff, who correctly-predicted the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and 2008 global economic crisis, zeroed in on the debt limit proposal:

This could be a moment where our creditors maybe get shocked into reality. To understand the situation that they are in, that we are in. That there is no limit. That we will borrow money until we can’t do it anymore. That we’re not going to do anything about this crisis. We’re not going to do anything to diffuse this ticking bomb. It’s simply going to go off. And I think our creditors are going to want to put as much distance as they can between themselves and the explosion. They’re going to want to sell dollars. They’re going to want to sell debt denominated in dollars. What is that going to mean? A weaker dollar and higher consumer prices for Americans. It ultimately means higher interest rates for Americans. It means the rug is going to be pulled out from the slowing economy. It means we’re going to go over the Mother of All Fiscal Cliffs, and one that is impossible to avoid.

So, my advice is don’t wait for that. Get out of your dollars. I’ve been saying this for a while, but I think the urgency, and the time with which to do it, is going to be running out. So you get out of your dollars. Get out of any debt denominated in any dollars. Because we’re not going to pay our bills, we’re going to inflate them away, which is the same thing as default. So you don’t want to ride out that inflation. You want to get out of U.S. currency. You want to look at foreign currencies where the governments are much less irresponsible. Look at real money. Look at gold and silver. Look at foreign stocks if they’re suitable that pay dividends. Do whatever you can to get out of Dodge, because just when the government assures you that there’s nothing to worry about, that’s the time where you need to worry the most.

(Editor’s notes: Info added to “Crash Prophets” page; I am not responsible for any personal liability, loss, or risk incurred as a consequence of the use and application, either directly or indirectly, of any information presented herein)

Trying to get a clear picture of Hurricane Sandy’s effects on New York City and the rest of the East Coast has been challenging.

If I rely on what the mainstream media has been showing and telling Americans, then I might be under the impression that U.S. President Barack Obama is masterfully-coordinating government assets in the clean-up of the region.

How did I get this impression? Well, there’s plenty of photos and video going around the Internet and on TV of the President looking all authoritative and on top of things these past couple of days, whether he’s in the White House “Situation Room” or with government officials from devastated areas.

Maybe he did take away something from the Benghazi terrorist attack (in addition to a guilty conscience, as a growing number of voices suggest he should have).

In fact, I might be convinced the recovery after Hurricane Sandy is doing just fine since New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided to let the City’s famous marathon take place as planned this coming Sunday.

As much as I hate to say it, many journalists realize President Obama doesn’t have much of a record to run on, so they’ll do anything they can to paint him and his administration in a positive light in the run-up to Election Day.

Don’t believe me? Observe how many media outlets are wording the increase in the U.S. unemployment rate today.

Second, when I see run-of-the-mill New Yorkers getting food out of a dumpster behind a supermarket, I know for a fact the MSM is not telling the whole story.

“Hungry New Yorkers Eating Out Of Dumpsters After Hurricane Sandy”
YouTube Video

Looting, violence, flooding, power outages, food/water/fuel shortages, now dumpster diving for food. I’ve seen enough now to realize this recovery is not as smooth as it’s being portrayed.

That being said, I know a lot of people are working their butts off trying to help those poor individuals on the East Coast- President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg included. I respect that and thank them for their efforts.

But enough spin already. Show us what the hurdles actually are- one might think listening to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell the other day that donated clothes or canned goods aren’t needed for the massive relief effort- so we can get this part of America truly back on its feet again.

Here in Chicago, residents have been told for some time now there is no manpower shortage in the Chicago Police Department.

According to Hal Dardick and Jeremy Gorner on the Chicago Tribune website this morning, City Hall says the police department has 12,282 officers, including 194 still in training.

The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police points out “hundreds” of officers who are on disability or leave are included in this calculation. And from the Tribune piece:

They point out the number of officers in Chicago has dropped by about 1,000 over the past six years.

The Chicago FOP has argued for the past couple years that the Chicago Police Department should return to its previously budgeted strength of 13,500 officers.

Recently, Mayor Rahm Emanuel presented his 2013 budget to the Chicago City Council. Under “Investing to Enhance Public Safety,” the Mayor called for, “Funding for CPD to hire officers to remain at full strength at all times.”

Apparently, Mayor Emanuel and Superintendent McCarthy were thinking more along the lines of a thousand cops less. Dardick and Gorner added:

Before year’s end, the city plans to hire 263 more officers, city officials said. And the mayor’s proposed 2013 budget calls for hiring an additional 500 officers — four quarterly classes of 125. The goal is to keep the total number of officers at about 12,500.

(Editor’s note: Italics added for emphasis)

“12,500.”

Goal posts moved?

Using this new benchmark, City Hall will probably tell residents the CPD is down only 218 officers.

“Okay, so there’s a tiny manpower shortage.”

However, if there’s one thing I took away from working in public safety administration for a number of years, it’s you don’t ignore what the men and women in the trenches repeatedly tell you. And the street cops seem adamant about there being a manpower shortage in the Chicago Police Department. From the popular Chicago police blog Second City Cop early this morning:

The city is already hiring back between 300 and 500 cops most nights to do “violence reduction.” That by itself shows were shorthanded in the extreme.

In the interests of public safety, employee well-being, and quite frankly, the city’s floundering reputation lately (“deadliest global city”) and the negative impact it’s having on revenue (“I’m staying away from Chicago because of all the crime” is something I encounter with increasing regularity), it sure sounds to me like Chicago needs more police officers. And fast.

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